BALTIMORE -- Mike Trout's bat is back, Tyler Anderson’s recent struggles continued and Luis Rengifo had a rare two-home run game. Here’s three things that stood out during the Angels’ 6-5 loss to the Orioles on Saturday at Oriole Park.
Trout tater
Mike Trout has yet to return to the outfield since coming back from a bruised left knee, but his bat and his batting eye are in vintage form.
Trout clubbed his 11th homer of the season -- and second since returning from the injured list on May 30 -- during his first career at-bat against O’s righty Tomoyuki Sugano.
Then the Halos’ DH-for-now drew two walks to reach 1,000 career free passes, joining Carlos Santana, Andrew McCutchen, Paul Goldschmidt, Bryce Harper and Freddie Freeman as active MLB players in that particular club.
Since returning to action on May 30 after a four-week IL stint, Trout is slashing .327/.414/.469 and has driven in 11 runs.
“I know as long as he’s healthy and he’s able to step into that batter’s box, he’s going to give us something,” said Angels manager Ron Washington. “And he has been giving us something.”
Washington said Saturday he was content to let Trout dictate the timetable of his return to the outfield.
“It feels a lot better just to be at DH and be in the lineup,” Trout said earlier this week. “We started mixing some [pregame outfield] activity, but just got a little sore on me. We’re just trying to be smart about keeping me in the lineup.”
Trout’s Statcast-projected 402-foot shot off the left-field foul pole came on a true rarity these days, a pair of mid-30-somethings facing each other in the Major Leagues for the first time.
This time, it was the 35-year-old Sugano looking on in vain, hoping the 0-1 sinker his 33-year-old opponent had hooked down the line would curl just foul.
Hard hit or hard luck?
Veteran right-hander Tyler Anderson’s late-May struggles have continued into mid-June, a stretch of six starts that has seen his ERA climb from 2.58 to 4.44.
“I don’t know if the contact has changed or not,” Anderson said. “But right now, it feels like every ball that gets put in play is a hit.”
The left-hander has pitched beyond five complete innings only once in that span. Against Baltimore, he allowed a season-high six runs on nine hits and a pair of walks, and his day finished after conceding consecutive homers to Cedric Mullins and Gary Sánchez, the latter connecting for his first as an Oriole.
“I never thought that Mullins was going to get him,” Washington said of the O’s lefty hitting outfielder. “And he had been handling Sánchez all day, and he left another one up. It just went bad right there in the sixth inning.”
Anderson threw 62 of his 91 pitches for strikes while absorbing a fourth consecutive defeat.
Rengifo response
Luis Rengifo connected in the sixth and eighth innings for his second and third home runs, good for his first multihomer game since Aug. 29, 2023.
And that feat came from both sides of the plate to end a career-long 53-game homerless streak.
Batting righty, Rengifo drove Keegan Akin’s 0-1 offering out to the opposite field, where it cleared the out-of-town scoreboard by a few feet.
Two frames later, there was no doubt about the left-handed swing he put on Andrew Kittredge’s first-pitch fastball, which Rengifo sent sailing a Statcast-projected 419 feet into the seats in right-center.
“We know he got it in him,” Washington said. “Now we’ve just got to try to find some consistency.”
Rengifo is only slashing .220/.252/.294 in 2025, but he showed moderate power when he contributed 33 homers in 253 games across the 2022 and 2023 seasons.
He was limited to six homers and 30 RBIs over 78 games in 2024, a season plagued by a range of ailments. He’s now hit in four straight games and is 4-for-7 through two games in Baltimore.